A Little Thing Called History
by aroseisarose
Summary: CJ and Toby get sloshed and forget they work together, but they can't forget who they are


A Little Thing Called History

Spoliers: Things Fall Apart

Disclaimer: Not mine, but that's okay. Don't sue me.

A/N: Thanks as always to my kick arse beta, Heather. She rocks my socks. Second off, this is my first CJ and Toby fic, so please be gentle. Feedback is like crack to me, so please, pleae bring it on! Not to sound desperate or anything... Enjoy!

It's a little something called history. A bond that can't be described because the story is long and complex, filled with plot twists at every turn. It consists of scotch and banter and knowledge of how the other works. It was as if they were made from the same cloth, same pattern, just tailored by a different hand. They both carry baggage of dysfunctional families, twisted relationships, secret pains that they only allow the other to nurse. They came to understand a long time ago that they needed each other in a way that wasn't common, that didn't make sense to anyone else. That is why they made it a point to get sloshed and forgot that they worked together. Co-workers couldn't do that kind of thing, but friends, people who were like them could, and they thought they should, and they often did.   
She can still remember the first time she saw him. She wasn't necessarily attracted to him, but she was drawn to him, as though she was a magent being pulled to him. They stole away from the party to share in a drink, and that is when their fates were sealed. They talked for hours and then he only left because the campaign was moving on to another grey city. They didn't kiss, didn't hug, didn't even shake hands; he simply wrote his phone number down and silently passed it to her. She still has that torn piece of napkin saved in the back of her underwear drawer. It reminds her of the times before she lived this life, because it seems so far back and shrouded with gauzy remembrances that sometimes she forgets about it.  
They both know that they have made mistakes with each other. He married someone else when she was away to get some sort of revenge against her. He loved Andie and still does, he just doesn't love her in the same way he loves CJ. His love for CJ goes beyond what he can explain, what he knows words for. Perhaps it was just the timing, she needed him, and he needed her and that was more than enough. She was going to move to New York to be with him, but Ben came back into her life and she chose her past over her future. Of course she didn't tell him about Ben, but he knew that there was someone and he was fine with that. It was a part of their favorite phrase: "No promises, no demands."  
They do that a lot, curl back into themselves and their demon haunted past. They always said tomorrow, but that day kept getting pushed back into a non-existence. They were safe from each other in the past, before they knew about what laid ahead of them. Yet,they both knew that there couldn't have been a time that they didn't know each other, it just didn't add up. It wasn't as if they weren't complete before they met, but they drew out qualities in the other that tended to fall abandoned in the absences. Sometimes when they were alone together it was as if the world was different, if certain things never had happened and others had. They enjoy that escape into a world of what might have been because it gives them the space to observe what is truly going on in their own lives. It had always been like that.  
When they fell into bed together that first time, it was as if things had finally started to make sense in their relationship. There was something tangible when they were together, their almost mystical aura turned into a poem of limbs and hearts and souls. She said that they rushed into it, he said that he didn't care. It had been three years since that first night they met, but it still felt like they had impulsively reached a point of no return. It scared them,because it made too much sense, too logical in the chaotic madness that they had come to embrace. In the years since that first night, they had come together many times. She wanted so often to form those three little words that he so often told her, but she was too scared. She wanted to act out her words in as many ways as she could, because she was all too aware that actions spoke louder than words. They came to know each other in body long after they had known the soul. That was something about their history, it was all wrong to everybody else, but to them, it made wonderful and beautiful sense. It didn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, that they had other relationships along the line because they realized that they would and could come back to each other.  
They always left the door open because to shut the door would be to sever the only lifeline they thought they had. When CJ first learned about her father, the first phone call was not to one of her brothers or one of her stepmothers but rather she picked up the phone and dialed Toby without thinking. It was an instinct to turn to him when things fell apart because he was the only person who understood that sometimes, life just comes and bites you in the ass. He was also the only person who held the balm to heal those wounds. He didn't judge her for sounding like she was a little girl again, crying for something to hang on to when her world was crumbling. He was the glue that could put it all back together again.  
There were a million moments when Toby wished that CJ was there, and sometimes she was, and sometimes she wasn't. If there was one thing that his father had imprinted on him, it was that sometimes, you have to go at it alone. He didn't want her to know about his own trauma after the shooting, of how he still could see Josh sitting there in his nightmares. Somehow though, she knew, and when she was there in his bed, she would hold him close while he was asleep, giving him her brand of invisible comfort.  
At night he thinks of how many times that she could have been killed, and he blames himself. He was the greedy one; he asked Leo if he could bring her on board for Bartlet For America. He didn't want to go at this one alone, not something this big. Maybe it would have been better for her to stay out in California. Then Rosslyn would be just a footnote in the annals of her memory, her heart wouldn't have broken over Simon, she never would have been in danger of anything more than a sunburn of her alabaster skin.  
When he saw Carolyn crying over David, he wondered what CJ's reaction would be if something happened to him. It wasn't out of the question, and that kept him up nights too. He wondered what would happen to Huck and Molly, and Andie, but there was something that drew him back to CJ. Andie would be all right, he thinks, but CJ would break. He sees that she has been on the verge of breaking for years, as if her internal fortitude was slowly being chipped away at by one of her many demons. CJ would be the one to get Huck and Molly through it, she would be the one on the floor coloring with them, or teaching them how to ride a bike. Sometimes he wonders what kind of mother she would have been had her life gone a different way, but he knows now that he has seen her with his children.  
CJ can't sleep anymore, not since she took on Leo's job. She feels like she has aged a thousand years and she can never go back. She thinks that California was a dream; it seemed to be so long ago. She loves her job, she loves the White House, she loves her life, but she can't help but wonder if it is slowly killing her. Toby knows how she feels, or he tries too, but only the Beatles know what it is like to be a Beatle. She realizes that he tries to take on some of her pain but he is already over burdened with worry for Carolyn and Sean, Danny, and Taylor who is still too young to understand that Daddy won't be coming home. He tries to support her while he is drinking his whiskey sour wondering how many hours his sister Eva has cried that day or if Judy has gotten up off the couch, or if Libby has called Carolyn offering to take the kids. They can't seem to get the hang of it quite yet, their new precariously balanced state.  
Tonight both of their minds drift to the space shuttle, and they wonder who the leak is. CJ wonders if it was Toby, something that he had done out of a desperation to maintain a certain sanity. She wonders if he did it out of hurt and anger, if it was a rash statement to get back at the systems that had, for all truth and purpose, screwed him over and over again. Toby wonders if it was CJ, her righteous anger boiling over. He knows how she can be, how she wants to fix all the world's wrongs in their own way. They both know the consequences but are too afraid to acknowledge them.  
Instead they get sloshed and fall into bed together without saying a word, just like they always have, just like their history dictates. The thing is though, neither of them mind it, that is simply who they are together.  
In the morning they will part and add another page to their ever growing tome together. This one will be a dark chaper, one of doubt and puzzlement made up of fear for the unknowing and the closing of what they have only known for the past eight years. Still, they can't help writing together, it's their way of coping with it all from the looming future to the daunting history of their past.


End file.
